Page 40 of The Secrets of Dragonfly Lodge
As they approached the final door, just before the back stairs, the smell grew stronger. ‘Oh, it’s horrible,’ Peggy cried, clamping her hand over her nose.
‘I hope it’s not coming from in here,’ Nancy said as she turned the doorknob.
Their temporary lab, thankfully, smelled only of formaldehyde and rubber. It was a cramped, untidy room, most of the worktops occupied by glass tanks containing insects, machines humming and other paraphernalia. A male technician they hadn’t seen before was laying out theirafternoon’s task on a central table. They were to examine muscle cell samples on slides through microscopes and to sketch and label what they saw. The technician was plump, bespectacled and a bit seedy. He spoke to James and Raj but barely met the women’s eyes as they pulled out stools and sat at the worktop. In the face of such unfriendliness, Nancy wasn’t even tempted to ask him about the evil smell. Soon, they were caught up in their work, chatting about what they saw through their microscopes and taking turns to borrow Peggy’s pencil sharpener. The stink was forgotten.
It hit them once more an hour later when they emerged into the corridor. Nancy glanced to her left to where a flight of stone steps led down to a basement. ‘Perhaps it’s coming from down there,’ she suggested and went to investigate.
‘Shall we?’ She reached for the handrail. The others were reluctant, but curiosity won out and they followed her down.
At the bottom, a dull black lino floor absorbed the weak flicker from a dying bulb overhead. Several doors ran away into gloom. The stink was overpowering.
‘What’s that?’ Raj whispered. They’d all heard it, a faint wailing sound.
‘Definitely animal,’ Peggy said, her eyes huge in her pale face.
James tried the handle of the nearest door. It was locked. He bent and applied an eye to the keyhole, then straightened. ‘I can’t see a thing.’
The wail came again.
Further down the corridor came the sound of a door opening. They looked up to see another white-coatedtechnician emerge, a set of keys clinking in his hand. He flinched when he saw the students. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘We, ah, wondered what the smell was,’ Nancy gabbled. ‘And we heard something. What’s in this room?
‘It’s not your business,’ the man growled. ‘You’re not supposed to be down here.’ He glided towards them. The students retreated and fled up the stairs.
‘He didn’t have to be so unpleasant,’ Peggy complained as they hurried along the ground floor corridor to the main door.
‘We were trespassing, I suppose,’ Raj sighed. He was always anxious about obeying the rules.
‘How were we to know?’ Nancy snapped as they walked out into the darkening quad. ‘There weren’t any notices.’
The late afternoon air was crisp and cold and they stood together tugging on coats and hats ready for their onward journeys. James and Raj started arguing over a book James had that Raj wanted to read, but Nancy barely heard them. She was thinking about their recent adventure.
‘How can we find out what’s down there?’
‘Leave it, I should,’ James sighed. ‘The tech chap’s right, it’s none of our business. Some research project or other, I expect. We’d only stir up trouble. I’m off to the bar. Raj, fancy a jar?’ Everyone knew that Raj didn’t touch alcohol, but that didn’t stop James teasing him.
‘You have one for me, West,’ Raj called cheerily to his departing figure, then he himself left, calling goodbye over his shoulder as he set off for the gate, one end of his long scarf flying. He cut a lonely figure. No one knew where Raj lived or what his circumstances were. Though everyone liked him,there was a barrier of politeness on both sides. He’d volunteered once that he’d been born in the Punjab and that was all anyone knew.
Nancy, waiting for Peggy to do up her shoelace, couldn’t leave the subject of the Great Stink alone. ‘I would like to know what happens down there,’ she said, ‘for peace of mind. Who should we ask?’
Peggy shrugged. ‘Mrs Hall?’ She picked up her satchel.
Nancy thought she was right. When the opportunity arose, she would ask their motherly technician.
Twenty-Two
It was a Friday lunchtime a week later and the Zoology building was deserted when Nancy crept down the back stairs, breathing through her mouth to avoid the smell. She hesitated at the start of the basement corridor and peered into the gloom, but, seeing no sign that anyone was about, felt in her skirt pocket for the key Mrs Hall had given her the previous day. Its paper label cited only a room number. It had taken Mrs Hall almost a week to get hold of it, and Nancy had had to promise to say if confronted that she herself had ‘borrowed’ it from the department office. ‘Or I might get the sack,’ Mrs Hall had warned her. The woman said she did not know what went on in this basement room, but had often wondered and worried about it.
The room was again locked, but the key rotated silently in a well-oiled movement and Nancy turned the doorknob and pushed. A wave of warm, foetid air at once struck her. She clamped a handkerchief to her nose and slid inside.
The room was dark and it took her a few moments toadjust. The only light came from a point of red shining from a machine that was gently chugging on a worktop, but it was enough to illuminate the room. She found herself in a small laboratory, one side of which was taken up, floor to ceiling, by, she saw, several large wire cages. In each of these, many pairs of eyes gleamed at her through the gloom. The effect was eerie and troubling.
She stepped closer and, although the owners of the eyes shrank from her approach, she saw with a shock that they were cats.
‘Someone’s experimenting on them. We must do something,’ she told the others, out of breath, after she found them in the refectory and described what she’d seen.
‘That’s the most awful thing I’ve heard,’ Peggy gasped. ‘Do you suppose it’s allowed? I mean, does Professor Briggs know about it?’
